UConn Grad: From Trepidation To Champion

Two of the touchstones of the UConn exoerience are the UConn Co-Op and Gampel… (Matthias Rosenkranz / via…)

May 06, 2014|By JESSE RIFKIN | FRESH TALK, The Hartford Courant

My parents watched as I walked up the front steps of Buckley Hall at the University of Connecticut, waved a final goodbye and disappeared into the building. Their eldest child was all grown up, entering college and leaving home.

On the very same day that I entered UConn, my father's old college roommate, now almost 50 years old, became a father for the first time. He had a son, named Jonathan.

As I lived in a dormitory for the first time, Jonathan lived in the world for the first time. As I took my first breath of campus air, Jonathan took his first breath.

Each of us achieves key milestones at different points along life's journey. For the UConn class of 2014, this weekend marks one of those milestones. I will be one of several thousand students receiving a degree with University of Connecticut imprinted on the diploma, having finished a first-rate education at one of the country's premier public universities.

When we arrived here as nervous freshmen on Aug. 27, 2010, times were different. America's most popular athlete? Tiger Woods.Among the main Republican contenders for president? Sarah Palin. Our first weekend here, Suzanne Collins spoke at the Co-Op bookstore on campus promoting her "Hunger Games" trilogy. I didn't attend because I'd never heard of it.

Yes, times were quite different. But we were different, too.

As my family dropped me off, I was tentative about living for the first time so far away from home — half an hour down I-84. At the time, it seemed like 3,000 miles! Never would I have imagined, less than four years later, that fear would dissipate so much that I would be enthusiastically taking a plane to live 3,000 miles away and start my new position as an intern for the Ellen DeGeneres Show in Los Angeles — an opportunity UConn helped me land, no less.

Calling my grandparents that first November of freshman year, I mentioned that I went to the men's basketball season opener, saying "We won our first game." My grandfather replied, "You called the team 'we,' not 'they'." You better believe it! At that moment, I suddenly realized how connected I felt to this place. The motto painted on the wall of the Student Union — which I had initially dismissed as a corny slogan — in fact rang true ... and still does: "Students today. Huskies forever."

Fast-forward four years. Talk about "we." We hold the 2014 men's national basketball title. We hold the 2014 women's national basketball title. This whole school is a "we" — connected by bonds of learning, of sports and of friends. Let me tell you about UConn: "We" are the champions!

The sense of trepidation at the beginning, of then discovering a second home away from home and finally, by the end, of wanting to extend my UConn experience and delay the so-called "real world" by even just one more day … those feelings are shared by us all.

Our gratitude extends not only to the faculty, not only to our families, but to the people of Connecticut for helping provide the educational opportunities and support that helped launch and advance so many young adults in so many diverse ways. So this weekend, as we close one chapter of our lives and embark on the next, we will not forget where we come from. Our class contains students from 44 states and 101 countries. We are from everywhere.

At the same time, we are all from Storrs.

And I hope that in the year 2032, at the UConn commencement ceremony, I will be at Gampel Pavilion watching Jonathan receive his diploma, too.

Jesse Rifkin, 22, of Glastonbury will graduate Sunday from the University of Connecticut with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

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